1.
Maundy Thursday Night
Pitch black
The Hand of God resting over us
Shadowing the interior of the church
With an intensity of sorrow
That average grief cannot touch.
The candles flicker in the fierce gloom
Like sparks of winter starlight
Refracted through sheets of melting ice.
I shiver in the darkness
Feeling intensely lost, alone,
Although the silent church is crowded.
Scarcely breathing
The sombre congregation kneels in prayer
Before the stripped altar, the vacated Shrine,
I look to the bare wall where an icon
Is normally placed among fresh cut flowers,
And am struck by a searing pang of loss.
Today and yesterday and tomorrow
Come together in this single moment
That seems to exist outside linear time.
And for one short hour, opened wide to the eternal,
In another epoch in a much altered country, ,
Christ, who is for everyman, remains alone,
Trapped like a thief on the Mount of Olives
Under an implacable Pesach moon.
Traversing a distant rock filled valley
The traitor and guards are marching to claim him
For the whip, the Cross, the Crown of Thorns.
His ferocious cry of desolation,
Wild, like that of an injured animal,
Reverberates bleakly into our lives
Although we can barely imagine him.
A cry that could not anticipate
The enigma that is salvation.
Under the twisted olive boughs
Deaf to all prayer
His disciples remained locked in sleep
Like untroubled children.
We, in our blacked out London church
Commune with private thoughts and fears,
Feigning to believe that in our personal lives
We could be almost as brave as Christ,
A miracle that dare not happen.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 29th. 30th. 2013.
April 16th. 2014.,
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2
The A Word
You were my first honest transgression,
My first encounter with the A word,
The noun that I was taught not to mention,
At home, and certainly not at school,
My first dive into the ancient Labyrinth,
(Buried deep under the prim Assembly Hall)
With its strange conundrums, spectres, animals
And a chance of being eaten by something
nasty,
Something that resembled a Human Bull,
A vast, mock tragic, monument to power
Inviting us to visit his Hall of Mirrors
Where nothing is certain, and legends overawe
Our grip on common things, on day to day reality.
I was nineteen, you were nearly thirty five,
A married woman, your family in the States,
Two young children awaiting your return,
An old house in the country to keep tidy,
A husband rather good with his old rifle
Not keen at all on a younger Cockney rival;
A herd of deer and a dozen hunting dogs;
A meadow land of butterflies and frogs.
You kissed my body as though it were an
icon
Something rare and precious, rich and rare,
A Chinese Vase perhaps? A pot of weekend
goodies
Far better than those skins flown back from
Africa,
Fresh hides of Antelope, of Lion, Cheetah,
Tiger
To keep alive your adventure under the sun
Inside the dark museum of your memory,
That Labyrinth of passion, madness, fun,
That held me in its thrall, we had a Ball,
But alas the tears were copious
When all had been said and done.
I had always considered myself to be less than ordinary,
You changed my mind about that, and now I am grateful.
You trained me for survival, made me sit down and write,
But alas you were not so lucky, you could find no way to
resist
The pull of your inner night, the call of your jet black star.
Hope extinguished
You rushed straight into the arms of the waiting Minotaur,
He tossed you into the air, you fell and broke.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
March 26th. - 28th. 2013.
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